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malinaa · 7 months

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TOP 9 BOOKS

tagged : @hmsharmony ty jennifer this was SOOO hard oh my god like. genuinely agonized me for days to think about what to choose but it was SOOO fun tho <3 tagging : @rosesau | @evcndiaz | @pendrgcn | @gayarthur | @the-tenth-arcanum | @oretsev | @wherepoetsdie | @bellamyblakru | @ryekat & anyone else who wants to do it !!! rules : list your top 9 books obviously. i cheated a little and put series as as one option because that's just who i am as a person. most of these i chose at random from my 5 star reads from the past few years btw

1. percy jackson and the olympians (series) by rick riordan

i was never a big reader in elementary school—or at least not to the extent that my classmates had been. my sixth grade english class required us to bring a personal book from home for silent reading and i stole my brother's spine-cracked copies of pjo and brought them to class. i finished the whole series in less than a school week (i had to scramble to the library to pick up another series because the single novel should have lasted me at least three weeks). pjo literally kickstarted my love for reading as a hobby and i truly don't know how to state the importance it had on my little ten-year-old brain fr

2. on earth we're briefly gorgeous by ocean vuong

i have never read a book more beautiful in prose and so uncommonly human than this. there's just something so incredibly heartbreaking knowing this whole book is the narrator's letter to his mother who can't read! like what the fuck

3. alone with you in the ether by olivie blake

this came as a surprise to Me when i first read it. i meandered through the first quarter, loving the writing style but feeling disconnected from the characters until the Church Hand Scene™ and it was hook, line, and sinker at that point (i have since come to love the disconnectedness in subsequent rereads, knowing that the feeling was the Point). i have read this book four (4) times since i read it first last year. LAST YEAR!!! olivie has like... fundamentally altered my brain chemistry or something because i feel like everything i have written since having read this book has been somewhat influenced by it.

4. much ado about nothing by william shakespeare

what can i say! this is theeeeeee romcom ever. i have watched so many adaptations of this play, read it countless of times and can recite some iconic lines, and still the banter between benedick and beatrice is sooo elite. cannot be topped!!

5. a place for us by fatima farheen mirza

fun fact: seed rec'd this book to me and has been reccing it to anybody who would listen. the prose is so lush and melancholic. it's one of those books where nothing Really happens, but you feel Every Emotion Under The Sun and you're just like. altered by reading it

6. the song of achilles by madeline miller

obviously.... OBVIOUSLYYYYYYY this had to go here. if i had two nickels for every greek myth retelling i read during school that fundamentally changed me etc etc u get it. i read this as a junior in high school when we, yet again, had to bring a personal book to read durin class. i think at that point of my life, i've never read something that tragic yet so beautiful at the same time and now i am always looking at the beautiful and tragic in media. so! there u go! brain cells rewired and whatnot!

7. the grisha trilogy by leigh bardugo

this is funny because i . technically did not rate any of these books 5 stars i'm sobbing. but like, considering the fact that my url is what it is and the way i always have them in the back of my mind, it's no wonder that i put them here. i have such an odd attachment to these books and these characters. i had copies of these books since their release but didn't touch them until ... before the sab tv release which is so fucking funny. like i don't know what i would be like if i read this as a t(w)een. i would've been so fucking insufferable ngl

8. when my brother was an aztec by natalie diaz

i actually read this for an assignment and had to write a report on it and i had SO much fun doing it. diaz plays a lot with hunger and her imagery is literally unmatched. i think about the way she contructs sentences and am filled with such envy. my beginning sentence for my paper was a nod to her style (though i failed miserably). it was: "in a paradoxical sleight of hand, hunger feeds in natalie diaz's debut." she is just. so fucking good at words i need to CHOMP on it

9. sharp objects by gillian flynn

you know the thing where you see a really popular author for a really long time and they have their work adapted to the screen and it's so good but you still haven't read their actual writing? yeah, that was me with gillian flynn (specifically about gone girl). i read gone girl, i read sharp objects, i read her short story the grownup, i'm currently reading the last novel of hers that i haven't read, dark places, and flynn is just so... incredibly good at constructing harrowing stories. it's no wonder why all three of her novels got adapted to the screen! her prose is so grounded. vivid. there's this ease to her writing that, whenever i concurrently read another novel, i always find the other piece to be lacking. i slink back to flynn's prose and immerse myself in her awful, human worlds.

#tag games #book recs #text #tais toi lys

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galacticlamps · 2 years

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fanfic writer asks 🤡🛒🎶🌞🤲? (I realise this is a lot and you were trying to keep them short gdjkhf I am SO sorry. no pressure to answer all of them haha)

🤡 What’s a line, scene, or exchange you’ve written that made you laugh?

This did give me pause because I know I’ve laughed at certain lines as I was writing them before, but rn I can’t remember any that are actually funny in and of themselves? I don’t even mean that like ‘on second thought, I amuse myself and no one else’ - I just think I’m probably more of a dramatic irony type of person than a crafter of fabulous one-liners in either dialogue or narration. Plus Two & Jamie lend themselves to that so well, so perhaps what I laughed at was less my writing and more just a general sense of, “Oh, you two idiots who don’t know what I (and every single other person in this fandom) know.” Like maybe what happens in Itemized or Visitation Rights isn’t like, laughter funny but eye-roll funny? Or maybe I’m just having trouble remembering smaller/more immediately funny bits so all I can do right now is talk plots/themes. That is also a possibility.

🛒 What are some common things you incorporate in your fics? Themes, feels, scenes, imagery, etc.

Well, surely “oh you idiots” is up there as either a theme or a feeling or something, but I believe that’s just a necessary symptom of being a Two/Jamie writer. As for me personally, hmm...

Do you know that bit in Much Ado About Nothing where Benedick’s like, “There’s a double meaning in that!” and the joke is that no, really that means exactly what you think it does you himbo - but also, this is a Shakespeare play & you are actively being played by your friends so okay, technically, sure there’s a double meaning in all of this, but calm down alright it’s not like you discovered anything that wasn’t already painfully clear? That bit? I feel like I love any chance to write something like that - characters knowing one another well enough to talk about one thing while talking about another even though it’s kinda obvious and #notthatdeep. They/I do not get points for being clever or anything because everyone knows what they’re saying/alluding to even if they get some kick or whatever out of not stating it directly. But it’s still fun to write, especially when characters have a rapport that supports that kind of thing.

Or did you mean something more concrete? I feel like I pay a lot of attention to physicality - again, easy when you’re writing Two/Jamie & that’s so much of who they are - but I kinda need to be able to trace the positions & movements of everyone in a fic all the time, so I feel like gestures & touch come up a lot with me, even if they aren’t strictly necessary to the story? I also catch myself pointing out the quality of light in most scenes I write, not necessarily as a thing to focus on, but another one of those struggle-not-to-mention-it things. But hey, I have a url to live up to!

🎶 Do you listen to music while you write? What song have you been playing on loop lately?

I do - current length of my Two/Jamie playlist is over 18 hours (whoops! I realize that's not really a playlist at all it's just a big group of songs that can be made to make me think of them) and I’ve also totally made smaller breakout playlists to help with focus on individual fics before. I stop when I want to get serious about editing, and then when I’m proofreading I can put music back on only if I have one of those dedicated smaller playlists, otherwise I’ll risk getting some wires crossed on vibes.

But what have I been playing on loop lately? Well in the “linked (tightly) to a specific fic” category, Pink Floyd’s “Us & Them” has been required listening while reading/working on the heart of one wip. And more generally I’ve been listening to Skerryvore’s album Evo a lot lately, and that’s got a few songs on it that also feature on the Two/Jamie playlist for various reasons.

🌞 Do you have a preferred time of day to write?

Answered! Spoiler alert: it boils down to ‘literally whenever I can’ - not very fun ik

🤲 Would you please share a snippet of a wip?

No :)

I’m kidding. But you might wish I wasn’t after you see it.

I won’t forget you, you know.

Jamie’s cheeks burned with the embarrassment of his own naivety. Wounded, he wondered if the Time Lords had laughed at him then, knowing what was about to happen. He wondered if the Doctor knew, and only put on a brave face so Jamie could go on believing that for as long as he would remember wanting to. But it hadn’t worked, and he remembered now – but also, he remembered now.

Deeper than the embarrassment but stronger too, there was a spark, a tiny ember glowing inside him: he hadn’t forgotten. The Time Lords had done their best but it had only stopped him for a little while – a few months, a handful of weeks. All-powerful masters of the universe, and they couldn’t even keep him from remembering for longer than that. No, he hadn’t forgotten. He’d just been a little dazed - distracted, that was all. But neither his heart nor his mind had let go of the Doctor, and they wouldn’t now either. It was dangerous, hope, Jamie knew that – knew the things it could lead people to do, the risks they might take in its name. But he had beaten their memory block after all, and if that could happen, then maybe . . .

It might be foolish of him to hope, but as he turned his face towards the stars with bleary, tear-filled eyes, he found it hard not to.

Because if he could remember, what could the Doctor do?

#me: says i'll answer these quickly #also me: disappears for a few days #im so sorry my life's been a mess #my 'more concrete' answer was not terribly concrete was it?#[also the wip the snippet's from isn't particularly close to completion]#[the only reason i picked it is bc i dont hate it but im not sure if it'll survive the edit]#oh no i cant remember if i have a tag for wips #wip #i guess

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mitskibf · 4 years

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Once you're done with your Indian matchmaking lb, please elaborate on Indian much ado about nothing (it's my favourite Shakespeare play!)

ok SO

- Messina is conveniently Mumbai now

- the whole thing is set amidst a very typical big fat indian wedding

- instead of meeting and falling in love at first sight, Hero and Claudio have been set to get married because Leonato and Don Pedro were like kyu na hum apni dosti ko rishtedaari mein badal de (why don't we turn this friendship into a familial relationship)

- so Claudio arrives to his own wedding and that's when he sees Hero for the first time because ya know arranged marriages do be like that (ref: ddlj)

- benedick is THAT guy from the groom's side

- Beatrice is very much over this whole wedding thing but she's happy for Hero and honestly she gets a free pass to drink, party and have amazing food

- I would like to see Beatrice interchange between a lehnga and a kurta throughout the play. very bisexual.

- everyone dresses up as different bollywood characters for the costume party. benedick is just raj from ddlj sorry I don't make the rules.

- I am changing all the songs to bollywood dance numbers stop me if you can

- why does don john wanna stop Hero and Claudio from getting married? idk he's fucking weird dude. we're never even given a whole reason in the play. he said: I will cause problems on purpose.

- Don Pedro and leonato looking at benedick and Beatrice: kyu na hum apni dosti ko rishtedaari mein badal de pt.2

- also because desi weddings are just a whole mess of older relatives trying to set up anyone who isn't married.

- when Don Pedro, leonato and Claudio are tricking Benedick into thinking Beatrice loves him the band for the baarat just starts playing so they have to shush them and start again. comedy at its finest.

- the iconic moments when Benedick and Beatrice have to hide while listening to the conversations? yeah there's literally 100 different hiding locations in an indian wedding so please take your pick.

- honestly I really just wanna see hero in a full on bridal outfit. she deserves it.

- also this one is sad but don john can literally tell Claudio that hero was just having fun in her Bachelorette party and Claudio would get angry because that's just how brown boys be.

- don john: yeah and,,, uhh she was,,, DRI NKING. Claudio: N O

- this is very nicely supported with the backstory that they've never met or spent time together so Claudio sees her as this innocent sanskari girl but when she does anything fun his image of her is gonna be shattered and he's gonna be an asshole to her.

- Beatrice does the whole oh if I were a man monologue in a lehnga and heavy jewelry and because she's so angry her dupatta falls off, makeup gets ruined, maybe she can even throw away a bangle or two. just Pure Female Rage <3.

- dogberry and verges are your pair of drunk uncles who are best friends and only hangout with each other

- literally only there for the food and extremely incompetent but very vital to the wedding.

- every time they're on stage just give one of them something to eat in their hand. an apple or a paneer tikka on a toothpick or a rasgulla.

- I really love that scene from the 2011 adaptation with David Tennant and Catherine tate where benedick is trying to write a sonnet while sitting on a beach chair just before the I would live in thy name line and I wanna take that but benedick is sitting on those throne chairs they put on the stage during receptions for the bride and groom to sit on

- instead of writing sonnets for each other they write shayari. very gay very gay.

- it ends the same way except hero doesn't marry Claudio because I hate him

#desi tag #desi #much ado about nothing #but make it indian #lmk if i missed something!!!!#asks #anon #uhh idk what else to tag #benedick and Beatrice are both bi and so is don pedro you can take this up with shakey boi not me #Shakespeare

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sociallyawkward--fics · 5 years

Note

52 and/or 61

Oh! And let’s do a Thomas Sanders Analogical. (I’m a sucker for analogical.)

———————–

[ao3 link]

Yup yup yup! Coming right up! The only idea for a while to occur to me was one VERY similar that I’d already written for Prinxiety so hopefully I managed to get far enough away from that one lol (I think I did at least)

(Also now I meet a conundrum because I want to title this the quote from 61, but I already have the Prinxiety fic titled that lol)

Also also, Punk Logan, except I don’t really know how to write Punk Logan but it’s whatever lol. And if this seems choppy it’s because I wrote it in segments at weird times lol

52. “Are you going to talk to me?”

61. “I told you not to fall in love with me.”

Word Count: 2779 (I was trying to keep it short but this is where we ended up lol)

——————————–

This was Virgil’s own personal hell. He was well and truly fucked. He should’ve never gone to school ever a day in his life just to avoid this moment.

He had to adapt a scene from a play, probably Shakespeare, he zoned out in terror before the teacher finished explaining, into modern-day language and then perform it in front of the entire class. And to top it all off, it was a partner project. He had to work with another person.

At least he wouldn’t have to perform alone.

But, just his luck, Virgil couldn’t just flock to Roman for the partner project like he always did. The teacher just had to assign partners. And Roman, with all his good luck, got that super nice new kid. Patton, Virgil thought his name was?

And Virgil got stuck with Logan Berry. The most intimidating kid in the class, maybe the school, notorious for getting into trouble on a regular basis.

“You have the rest of the class period to work with your partner,” Mrs. Mitchell said. “Pair up. And I better see working! No goofing around!”

Virgil hesitantly looked over at Logan, seeing him already packing his stuff up and and standing from his desk. Virgil took a deep breath and curled in on himself.

Roman clapped his shoulder as he left his desk next to Virgil, heading over to Patton. “Good luck, Virge. Tame the beast.”

“Yeah, right,” Virgil hissed back, glaring at Roman’s retreating back.

He jumped as Logan plopped down in Roman’s seat. Barely holding back another jump when Logan’s backpack was tossed to the ground between them.

“So we got some scene between Benedick and Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing,” Logan said, sounding bored.

Virgil nodded.

“So I guess we’ll have to adapt it so that Beatrice is a dude, unless one of us wants to dress in drag.”

Virgil nodded.

“And then I suppose we’ll do the hula and get chased down by hyenas.”

Virgil started to nod, then jerked slightly and shot Logan a weird look as best as he could without meeting his eyes.

Logan rolled his eyes, Virgil could tell by the head movement, and tugged at one of the studs in his ears. “Just checking if you were actually listening.”

Virgil nodded again.

Logan buried his head in his hands. He looked up, exasperation rolling off of him in waves. “Look, we need to do this project. Are you going to talk to me? Or not?”

Virgil opened and shut his mouth a few times.

Logan ran a hand through his hair, wincing when his fingers caught in a knot and carelessly dropping the blue strands that came loose to the floor. Virgil scowled a little. That was kind of gross.

“Look, I get it, I’m scary, whatever. Everyone’s freaked out by me. Can we just do the project?”

Virgil nodded and tried to take a deep breath. “Making Beatrice a guy would be okay,” Virgil got out in a choked whisper.

Logan raised his hands to the sky, as if in praise. “He speaks!”

Virgil looked back down at his desk and scowled.

By the time they got to actually discussing their plans for switching Beatrice’s gender, the period was almost over. Virgil winced apologetically when the bell rang in the middle of one of Logan’s comments.

“You won’t have any more class time for this,” the teacher called. “You have a month and a half to finish this project, make sure you get together with your partner to finish and rehearse!”

Virgil wanted to growl at their teacher’s words. Logan actually did.

“Of course she doesn’t give us any more class time for this, she can’t even fucking teach.”

Virgil’s eyes widened and snapped to Logan’s face.

Logan turned his glare on him. “What?”

Virgil averted his eyes again and raised his hand in surrender, speedily packing his stuff. Logan ripped his notebook out of his hands, scribbled something in the margins, and shoved it back at Virgil, standing to leave.

“Let me know when you’re free to work on the project,” he said as he left.

Virgil looked down at the notebook. Messily scrawled in blue ink was a phone number.

Ugh, Virgil hated texting first.

Roman had to talk him into at lunch, Patton joining them for the meal and providing his own support.

Eventually, Virgil did text, right before the bell to signal the end of lunch rang. Logan texted back nearly immediately and they (unfortunately) made plan’s to walk to Logan’s after school (because Virgil absolutely refused to do this at his house, even if Logan also absolutely did not want to do it at his) to make more progress on their project.

Virgil worried about it throughout the rest of his classes. He’d worked himself well up by the time he was walking out the front doors with Roman and Patton.

“He can’t be that bad,” Patton chirped, bouncing next to Roman. “Lots of people can seem scary, even if they’re super nice.”

Roman laughed. “Not sure about that, but he definitely won’t murder you if he has to do a project with you. I’ve heard others who have worked with him say that he’s secretly a nerd. Could even be in the running for valedictorian.”

“Great,” Virgil muttered. “Now I have him insulting my poor intelligence on the list of things to dread.”

Roman rolled his eyes. “You’re plenty smart.”

Virgil turned when he heard a new set of footsteps speedily coming up on them. Logan speedwalked right past their group, brushing Virgil’s shoulder as he went.

“Let’s go, then,” Logan said.

Virgil shot a panicked look at Roman and Patton before rushing to catch up.

The two of them walked in silence for the full fifteen minutes it took to get to Logan’s house. Logan unlocked the door a much smoother motion than Virgil had ever accomplished in his life and slipped his shoes off in the entryway, motioning for Virgil to do the same.

“I’m home,” Logan called into the house. “I have a classmate with me.”

A frail looking woman poked her head out from what Virgil assumed to be the kitchen. “Blueberry, dear, just in time. Can you come help me with something?”

Logan slipped his backpack off, tossing it over onto the couch, and followed what Virgil assumed to be his grandmother into the kitchen. Uncertain of what to do, Virgil followed suit.

Logan reached up and handed his grandmother a dish from the cabinet before turning back to face Virgil, still standing awkwardly in the entrance to the kitchen.

“Nan, this is Virgil. We’re working on an English project together.”

Logan’s grandmother’s face lit up. “Oh, it’s so lovely to meet you! Logan never brings home friends!” She walked forward and pulled him into a hug.

Virgil shot Logan a panicked look over her shoulder, but Logan wasn’t paying attention. Instead he had his face buried in his hands in what seemed to be mortification, his ears pink.

“Nan, we really should get to work–”

Logan’s grandmother pulled back. “Oh, of course! Virgil, will you be staying for dinner?”

He shot a look at Logan, who shrugged. “I–I guess I can?”

“Wonderful! Alright, now you boys go on and get to work. I’ll come get you when it’s time to eat.”

“Thanks, Nan.”

Logan grabbed his backpack off the couch and led Virgil to his bedroom. Which was a lot more plan than Virgil had expected.

There was a bed with navy blue sheets. A desk with a laptop. A few astronomy posters. The walls were a typical beige. Nothing at all like Virgil expected. He glanced back over at Logan to find him wiping makeup off his face.

“Not what you expected?” Logan asked.

“Not really,” Virgil mumbled, finally setting his backpack down off to the side, where it wouldn’t get in the way.

Logan sighed. “There’s a reason I didn’t want to do this here. Get set up, I’m taking my contacts out, they’ve been bugging me since fifth period.”

Virgil furrowed his brow. This was not the same guy that told the (frankly, pretty shitty) principal to suck his dick. Maybe this wouldn’t be as terrible as he had feared?

Virgil got out his English stuff and waited for Logan to come back.

They made good progress on updating their characters that night. Virgil was able to relax and finally stop whispering and mumbling. Logan’s grandmother’s cooking was delicious.

By the time Roman had arrived to pick him up and take him home, Virgil had decided that Patton was right and that Logan was a pretty chill guy. Roman still didn’t believe him, but Virgil knew it wouldn’t be that easy to convince him.

The days and weeks that followed went similarly. Logan started joining Virgil and Roman (and now Patton, as well) at lunch. At least three days of the week after school, Virgil and Logan would go to Logan’s house to work on the project. Sometimes they would meet up on weekends, too.

There was one night when Virgil had accidentally stayed too late to leave and the two had an impromptu sleepover, deciding to work further on the project as long as they were awake. At least, they were pretending to work further on the project while goofing off.

“Mrs. Mitchell is absolutely going to kill us,” Virgil snickered.

Logan let out his own laugh. “Not our fault she thinks Shakespeare is the height of literature, “nothing” literally meant “dick” back then and she gave us Much Ado About Nothing.”

Virgil buried his face in the borrowed pillow to cackle without having to worry about waking Nan.

“Not to mention,” Virgil said as he lifted his face back up, “we’re turning it into two gay guys. She’s going to hate that, I don’t think she thinks her lesson plans through.”

Logan threw his head back, lost in snorting laughter and sending his glasses flying. “Just don’t fall in love with me and we’ll be golden.”

Virgil made some sound between a scoff and a snort. “No problem, I’m just here to piss of the student body, be gay, and do crime.”

They continued their routine after that. Roman and Patton started hanging out with them on weekends, and for some reason Roman kept sending him sly looks whenever the four of them were together. Every one was met with a confused look from Virgil, but Roman would simply shrug and not say anything.

It took another three weeks, to the point where Virgil and Logan were finally getting into the rehearsal stage, for Virgil to finally realize what those sly looks meant.

Virgil tripped over his unfinished costume and Logan darted forward to catch him before he could hit the ground. Virgil laughed it off and they reset, but his cheeks were warm and his heart was beating far too quickly.

But how did Roman realize it before he did? Had he been obvious before he’d even realized he liked Logan? Did Logan know?

This was Virgil’s own personal hell. He was well and truly fucked. He should’ve never gone to school ever a day in his life just to avoid this moment.

He could not be in love with Logan Berry. There was just no way he’d like him back!

They were only hanging out together because they were working on a project together. Another week and a half and Logan would move on, probably not even give him the time of day.

No, he couldn’t act on these feelings, and he just had to pray that Logan hadn’t noticed. He would get through this project, they would stop talking, and Virgil would get over it.

Even if Roman nagged him from that day forward.

Even if Patton started giving him sad looks when he thought none of them were looking.

Even if Logan asked him why he started being so weird.

At least Logan questioning him he was able to play off as anxiety over having to perform. And Logan bought it, thankfully, not questioning him further.

They finished their project and performed it for the class (thought not without numerous anxiety attacks on Virgil’s end, as well as him nearly throwing up the moment they stood in front of the class in their costumes and all their makeup), but even so, Logan didn’t leave.

He ate lunch with them everyday. He invited Virgil over at least one day every week, if not more. At least every other weekend they would end up having a sleepover.

And Virgil’s feelings, unfortunately, only grew.

Luckily, it seemed he had gotten rather good at keeping a cap on them. Roman and Patton stopped nagging and teasing and giving him looks. If fact, they stopped bringing it up at all. Virgil would be suspicious if he wasn’t so relieved.

It was another Friday night that turned into an impromptu sleepover. Really, it was more Saturday morning by that point, but Virgil certainly wasn’t paying attention.

Somehow in their sleepy states, Virgil had let his guard down. The two of them laid on the floor of Logan’s room, laptop at an angle they could both see and playing Star Trek episodes in the background. Virgil’s head rested on Logan’s stomach as they laid perpendicular to each other, Logan’s hand combing absent-mindedly through his hair.

“You know,” Logan sleepily mumbled, scratching a bit more against Virgil’s scalp.

Virgil hummed, both in pleasure and to show that he was listening.

“I told you not to fall in love with me. Back when we were working on that English project, remember?”

Virgil tensed, eyes shooting wide open. He was suddenly very awake, but he didn’t dare move and startle Logan out of his sleepy state. There was a chance he could pass out any minute and forget all of this, Virgil just had to keep it cool.

“I was joking, of course. But I didn’t plan on one thing. You know what that was?”

Virgil hummed again, not trusting his voice. His hands had started shaking and he twisted them into the blanket that had been haphazardly thrown over him at some point.

“I didn’t plan on me falling in love with you. And yet, here we are, aren’t we?”

Virgil gasped, shooting up into a sitting position and twisting around to look down at Logan. Logan looked startled and sat up as well.

“I-I’m sorry. The late hour must be getting to me, just ignore me, I–”

Virgil shot forward, grabbing one of Logan’s hands and using his free hand to cup Logan’s jaw. He leaned forward until their noses were touching.

“Do you mean it,” he said lowly.

“I–Yes, I mean it.”

“Well thank fuck,” Virgil said.

He leaned forward to capture Logan’s lips, feeling Logan draw in a quick breath through his nose. For a moment, Logan didn’t kiss back, and Virgil panicked.

Then Logan pushed forward to kiss back with so much force that Virgil fell toppled backwards onto his back, landing in a pile of pillows that they’d been smacking each other with earlier. Virgil laughed and Logan leaned over him, chuckling.

“Guess I got a little overexcited,” Logan said sheepishly.

“Hey,” Virgil said flirtatiously, “I’m not complaining.”

Logan rolled his eyes. “Roman teach you that?”

Virgil laughed. “Just shut up and kiss me, nerd.”

Logan complied, moving in and pinning Virgil down to the pillow pile with his body. They continued on like that for a few long minutes, completely lost in each other, the Star Trek marathon completely forgotten.

Then there was a loud knocking at the door and the two of them pulled their lips apart to look at it in a panic.

“You boys best be behaving in there,” Nan called through the door. “I don’t want to be hearing any suspicious sounds.”

Virgil threw his head back and cackled. Logan flushed from his collarbones to his hairline.

“Nan!” He yelled back. “It’s three in the morning, why are you up?!”

“I could ask the same of you boys,” she answered. “Keep it PG in there!”

“Yes, ma’am,” Virgil called through his snickers.

Logan shoved at his shoulder, which was rather ineffective considering the fact that he was the one laying down against a solid surface.

“You’re cute when you blush,” Virgil laughed.

Logan cocked his head, as if listening, then moved forward into Virgil’s space again. “Stop flirting and kiss me some more.”

Virgil grabbed Logan and rolled them over, pinning Logan down instead, grinning when his blush returned.

“Whatever you say,” he said.

Needless to say, they did not separate for some time after that.

#sanders sides #Analogical #virgil sanders #logan sanders #roman sanders #patton sanders #punk!logan #podcastsandcoffee #sanders sides fic #sanders sides fanfic #sanders sides fanfiction #my writing

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shittyshakes · 4 years

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Shakespeare Commentary from Someone who has never read Shakespeare (Much Ado Version)

In which Mod Rachel just. Nerds out. Because Beatrice and Benedick deserve it.

Act 1

Scene 1

I can already tell that this shit is going to be over-dramatic as fuck, but I live for these kinds of romcoms

Beatrice is a WOMAN, like holy fuck she’s a whole mood

(yes, I’m thirsting on this feed and i’m not even sorry)

she either realllly likes this Benedick fellow or really despises him, but I’m going to go with the former

their banter is really funny though

i will state this reads like flirting? like this is just establishing all the sexual tension right?

I don’t know how I feel about Don Pedro’s character

What does Benedick have against love or is he just against Hero? Or is he just salty from his lack of love?

although to be fair Claudio did just see Hero and declare his undying love for her, that’s kind of ridiculous

“I’ll live as a bachelor”

those are famous last words, why you always lyin Benedick?

wait...

Benedick, as in bene-dick; is Benedick’s name a pun on dicks??????

I knew this play was wrought with sexual innuendos but holy crap

after confirming with Leo, I can confirm that we talked about this exact fact in lecture and I’m just a dumbass

For some reason all of Don Pedro’s plotting to set people up gives me bad vibes but maybe I’m just superstitious

Scene 2

gasp! An Antonio appears! Is he gay

side note, apparently this is the only Antonio in Shakespeare that is not and, won’t lie, I’m slightly disappointed

wait was all this scene just 2 dudes sitting around and talking about Hero? what was even the point?

Scene 3

Is Don John sad like Antonio was from The Merchant of Venice?

for some reason I think not

oh wait, maybe he has an inferiority complex to Don Pedro

okay, since this guys name is Borachio (which means drunkard in Spanish) can I infer that he is always drunk and/or is drunk in this scene?

maybe Don John is just salty, maybe that’s all his motivation is

Act 2

Scene 1

Hero speaks!

I’m interested to see if Hero is the “hero” of the play, implementing the pun

P.S. I’ve finished reading, she is not and I’ve never been more disappointed to be wrong. I was really rooting for her

In text (before watching any kind of staged edition) I imagine this to be like the dinner in Shrek 2, so I’m curious to see how people blocked this scene in film and stage

Does Beatrice really need a husband though? She’s doing fine on her own and we stan 1 strong independent woman

side note, sometimes I forget Hero is even in this play, she speaks so little

I am so confused, who is Margaret and where did they come from? Is she even that important or is she just here to move the plot?

are she and borachio a thing? wtf even was their exchange???

Same with Ursula?

I can’t believe they’re going to talk to Benedick like he’s not Benedick because of the mask

THE TROPES, THE TROPES

So wait, now Claudio is pretending to be Benedick? None of this is a good idea

So wait, now Claudio thinks that Don Pedro loves and wants Hero?

God, what a mess. This is more of a mess than I am

So, Benedick likes Beatrice then

he kind of reminds me of a young boy who can’t confess his feelings so he’s just awful to her (pulling pigtails)

I agree with Don Pedro that Benedick and Beatrice would make an excellent married couple; imagine the hate-sex

but also, Don Pedro has waaaaaaaayyyyy too much time on his hands

Scene 2

Is Don John being influenced by Borachio?

Is borachio the real mastermind?

better question, is borachio drunk right now?

Scene 3

oh Benedick definitely has the hots for Beatrice

oh my god he just wants her to confess first, what a dork

Claudio @ Benedick: oh how the turned tables rawr XD

I both love and hate how easily Benedick is buying into all this

They totally know Benedick is listening, those sly dogs

This is prime bad romcom right now

Act 3

Scene 1

Hero is back and with some lines

I hope she speaks more in this second half, I’m intrigued by her character

oh so even she is in on the “let’s trick Benedick and Beatrice into confessing”

I love this for her. I hope she is having the time of her life because it’s what she deserves

because tbh, no one here gives a frack about her and Claudio

Also I can NOT believe that these people say Benedick’s name with a straight face. They are basically complimenting his penis the entire play and I am here for it

I still can’t believe these dumbfucks bought it

Scene 2

ooh this is when Benedick changes appearances, he did it to woo Beatrice

i love that for him, i love that he is so soft for her

we stan 1 brotp between Benedick and his homies

Don John noooooooooooooooooooooooo

I’m really not here for Claudio x Hero but it is what it is

Scene 3

what the fuck kind of name is dogberry?

wait is this insinuating that he’s shit? or the shit?

a shitty bitch?????

so they’re just plotting

Scene 4

so much speaking from Hero

we live to see it

all things that begin with H --> ‘horny’ ;D

Scene 5

they’re talking about the wedding, right?

this is the part where i begin to get lost and wish for an adaptation to watch

so is dogberry going to crash the wedding?

Act 4

Scene 1

wait did Claudio just deny marriage? And they just continued on like nothing happened?

did he just insult Hero in front of her father?? what balls

oh he’s saying she’s unpure

oh my god this is a mess

i can’t believe that everyone just believes this? and now she’s not worthy to live? That’s cray-cray? like what is even happening

oh shit, is it happening????

oh shit it’s happening!!!

oh shit no

but as a side, please do kill claudio, he’s a dumbass who doesn’t deserve Hero

Scene 2

sexton, really?

i’m not really sure what the point of this scene was?

also what was all the talk about ass? do they mean like butts? or like a donkey?

i’m so confused ?????

Act 5

Scene 1

so they’re talking about the “death” of Hero

so they’re pulling a juliet? or is juliet pulling a hero?

I guess this isn’t important but I don’t actually know which was written first

yeah suck on that claudio, you piece of shit

AND DON PEDRO STILL BELIEVES THIS GARBAGE

absolute heresy I say

Benedick is the actual homie, the MVP

get Claudio’s head out of his ass

god, all men are bastards except benedick

yeah that’s right, I said it

Scene 2

I actually love Benedick, 10/10 great character

I wasn’t sure how I felt about him at first, but now we gucci

I’m glad they’re back to playful bantering.

I love that for them

Scene 3

so we’re at the “funeral” or just Claudio before the grave?

despite the fact that he’s the one that humiliated and betrayed Hero at the altar he’s still going to return every year? i’m so confused

Claudio isn’t a great character and I don’t like him

to be completely honest, I can’t even tell if he’s sad during this interaction

Scene 4

so Claudio was sincerely sad then?

Benedick’s asking permission to marry Beatrice? That’s so cute, he’s such a dork, an absolute Hufflepuff

we stan 1 respectful boi

and now we’re back with the denial and insecurity but at least we’re finally getting to the true confession

the tension was killing me

aw yeahhhhhhh, they finally kissed

I don’t know how I feel about Beatrice’s lack of lines following the kiss but it is what it is

and just remembering that during Shakespeare’s time this was all played by dudes makes me absolutely lose my shit

final rating: 7/10

Benedick and Beatrice were the highlights of this play and I can’t wait to see the adaptations to see people genuinely have fun playing these two characters

genuinely a really fun play and I wasn’t completely lost reading this so we count that as a win

minus points for claudio, i’m still salty that he and hero got married

#much ado about nothing #shakespeare #reaction #shakespeare commentary #my commentary #shittyshakesblog #benedick #beatrice #claudio #much ado #maan #rachel reacts to shakespeare #part 1

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berenshand · 4 years

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pLease talk about why benedick and claudio are foils!! i’ve only just gotten into much ado and i’m thirsty for analysis 👀👀

hoooo eee you opened a can of worms here my friend. there is literally nothing i would rather talk about than this. im so sorry i am not kidding when i say i wrote an essay in response to this

Ok so, a big theme in Much Ado is realistic vs idealized love, and there’s also a lot of generalizations about love, but Claudio and Benedick generalize about love in totally opposite ways. At the beginning of the play, Claudio sees Hero and immediately thinks ‘she is beautiful and I would like to marry her’. Sure, he’s seen her before, but he was distracted because he was, you know, about to go to war, but in the first scene, he tells Don Pedro that he “liked her ere I went to wars.” Like, he didn’t realize he was in love with her til after, but it was love at first sight.

Claudio, through the whole play, is idealistic – he wants everything to be perfect, to be black and white. There is no room for ‘maybe’ in his character (which, unfortunately means he does not use his brain cells). When he talks about Hero, he almost always talks about her beauty or her chastity. He’s focused on the superficial, and he’s hyperbolic (almost like Romeo). He’s trying really hard to be the perfect courtly lover stereotype – he can’t just say ‘Hero is beautiful’, oh no, he has to say “she is the sweetest lady that ever I looked on”. Benedick even says Claudio used to speak “plain and to the purpose” but now his words are “fantastical”. So Claudio is way over the top.

Claudio expects everything to be perfect. Another big theme in the play is appearance vs reality. Claudio thinks that because Hero looks perfect, she must be perfect, and Claudio seems to be incapable of interpreting things beyond the surface-level, which is foreshadowed when he sees Don Pedro with Hero. He literally planned this with Don Pedro, but as soon as Don John and Borachio show up and say ‘oh by the way, DP’s in love with Hero’, Claudio’s like ‘damn, Don Pedro must be in love with Hero’. Y’all know Shakespeare loves a soliloquy, and Claudio does get one here, but it isn’t a ‘hm should I listen to Don John who is notoriously untrustworthy’ soliloquy, it’s a ‘well I guess Don Pedro screwed me over’ soliloquy. Claudio sees/hears something, has no evidence to contradict it and says ‘well, that must be true’. He doesn’t look for counter evidence or take Don John’s character into account. He’s gullible, black-and-white, and idealistic. If someone says something he can’t, for a fact, disprove, it must be true.

Later, when he accuses Hero, he says, “O Hero, what a Hero hadst thou been, / If half thy outward graces had been placed / About thy thoughts and counsels of thy heart!” He’s finally learned that people aren’t always what they seem, but HE LEARNED IT FROM THE WRONG PERSON because he always sticks with his first impression, instead of like, trusting the person he loves and wants to marry. His first instinct was to believe Don John at the party that Don Pedro isn’t a loyal friend, and a few scenes later, to believe Hero isn’t a loyal fiancée. His trust is completely based on perfection: he wants people to be perfect, and when they aren’t, he doesn’t just like. move on. He completely goes off the rails. In the party scene, he’s furious with Don Pedro, which makes him snap at Benedick and storm off in a huff (meanwhile Benedick is stood there like ????????????), and when he accuses Hero, he can’t just do it quietly. Like Beatrice complains, he waits til they are in church in front of God and everybody and completely destroys her life. He learns one negative thing about her and her perfection is destroyed and he will never love again.

Benedick, on the other hand, does not believe in love at first sight. He doesn’t believe in love at all. Nearly every single one of his lines in the first scene is him complaining about love. He says every man who marries will eventually “wear his cap with suspicion”. (This means married men have to wear caps to cover up their cuckold horns – Elizabethans had a sort of… urban legend that if your wife cheated on you, you would grow horns). So Benedick is basically saying ‘women will never be faithful’ (the irony of this is apparent later when Balthasar sings “men were deceivers ever”). However, Benedick also says a lot of stuff about being a ladies man??? He’s very inconsistent – the whole ‘appearance vs reality’ thing comes up with him too bc its like he really doesn’t want people to think he’s interested in romantic love but he also really wants them to think he can Get It. Who is the real Benedick????? We don't really know bc he keeps swapping personalities. Personally I think it’s interesting how Shakespeare seems to like flipping the connotations we expect… in Romeo and Juliet, he gives day a negative connotation and night a positive one, which is almost unheard of in western literature, and in Much Ado, the consistent character (Claudio, who is consistently gullible and idealistic) is a much less positive character then the inconsistent one (Benedick, who has no clue what he is doing ever).

A few scenes later, Benedick is in the garden complaining about how men make fun of other men who fall in love, then become the exact thing they’re complaining about by falling in love “and such a man is Claudio”. He goes on to say he will never fall in love (methinks he doth protest too much), but if he does the woman he loves will be perfect in every way. On the surface, it sounds like he has high standards, but what he’s really saying is ‘I will never marry because no such woman exists’ (not unlike Beatrice saying a man with no beard is too young for her but a man with a beard is too old – she’s saying she won’t marry because there is no such man in between – you either have a beard or you don’t). Benedick is an idiot, but not that kind of idiot. He knows the perfect woman doesn’t exist. Where Claudio is idealistic, Benedick is realistic.

……and then like one page later, he hears his friends say Beatrice loves him and he goes ‘oh hell yeah I will be horribly in love with her’. His soliloquy from earlier that said ‘men are idiots because they mock love then fall in love’? He’s proving himself right. But the difference between him and Claudio is that he can always acknowledge Beatrice’s faults. Even in the very beginning, he says Beatrice is prettier than Hero, though she is unfortunately “possessed with a fury”. Even now, when he’s deluded into thinking she loves him, and he’s listing off her virtues, he can still say she is “wise, but for loving me; by my troth, it is no addition to her wit”, and not only is he acknowledging her faults, he’s also acknowledging his. He even decides to be kind to her because he hears his friends roasting him and thinks ‘wow am I like that? I need to fix that’. While Claudio refuses to even consider that he might be wrong about distrusting Hero, Benedick is making a list of his own flaws and calling it Things I Need To Work On. Claudio’s list is more like Things I Am Right About Without Doing Any Critical Thinking.

What this all boils down to, for me, anyway, is again, that idea of realistic vs idealistic. Claudio is idealistic about himself too. He always thinks he’s right. Benedick knows he has flaws and actively tries to fix them. Claudio has unrealistic expectations of perfection. That whole ‘love is not love which alters when it alteration finds’ thing does NOT apply to him. If he finds an alteration he will not only stop loving you, he will give up on love forever, and ruin your entire life in front of every single person you know. He thinks love is nice. That it’s a warm fuzzy feeling that makes you feel like chirping birds helped you get dressed in the morning. But Benedick knows that love is a choice. His love for Beatrice isn’t love at first sight. In fact, they had a past relationship that ended badly. His feelings for Beatrice change on a dime because he decides he is going to love her, which is a crucial part of any real relationship, romantic or otherwise. We have to choose to love people in spite of their failings because everyone has failings. If we give up on everyone who fails us, we will be alone – just like Claudio and Don Pedro end up isolated from everyone in Act 4 and 5.

When Hero and Claudio reconcile, they slip right back into their dramatic overwrought nonsense – Hero’s all ‘I truly was dead, because you killed me, but I have returned to life’. Beatrice and Benedick are like “I take you for pity” and ‘here’s a shitty sonnet you wrote about me lmao’. Claudio and Hero feel like Romeo and Juliet 2.0, but Beatrice and Benedick sound like your favourite real-life married couple because they can make fun of each other. So again, Shakespeare is playing with expected connotations: the person who’s more serious should probably be a more positive character than the one who can’t take anything seriously, but it’s Benedick, who literally never stops joking around, who is the positive character, and Claudio, who takes everything Very Seriously, who ends up looking like an idiot.

This is a really long answer but basically, they’re foils because Benedick is unserious, realistic, and introspective, while Claudio is serious, idealistic, and self-righteous.

#musingsofaretiredunicorn #i also think benedick is fascinating character in that he's conceited but not self-righteous #which i actually think many of us are -- we say dumb stuff like 'i am a genius i am the best person ever to live i deserve a pulitzer prize #but we're also like 'oh no i was mean to that person one (1) time now they'll hate me forever'#like its the duality of man and its actually very normal but its very hard to capture in fiction but benedick does #shakespeare #sorry if this does not make sense i typed it at 2 am because it wouldn't leave me alone

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transdro1ds · 4 years

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My new terrible AU that sprung into my head fully formed like a reverse Athena is a theater AU and it’s...

Look for some reason this quote from that I love from Much Ado About Nothing popped into my head: “I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.” Ah! Beautiful. Since my brain is 90% Reed900 now, my brain immediately went “wHAT IF—“

So this is not an AU where they’re Beatrice and Benedick, this is an AU where they *play* Beatrice and Benedick in a gender-blind production of Shakespeare. (Look, this is something you don’t know about me, but I’ve done a lot of live theater in my life including quite a bit of Shakespeare and I have lots of opinions about casting and I think gender-blind casting is the best just in general.)

Gavin plays Benedick and Nines plays Beatrice (nonbinary Nines in this AU for SURE btw). I know your first impulse is to cast Gavin as Beatrice and that was my first impulse too but listen, that’s wrong. It’s better this way.

Gavin as goofy, cocky, self-deprecating Benedick is prime content. It’s great and it’s really good. Meanwhile, Nines gets to channel their rage into Beatrice, which is something Nines doesn’t get to do very often in fics.

If Nines is Beatrice, Nines gets to say this line about a character who disgraced Beatrice’s cousin but who she is supposedly powerless to take direct revenge upon because of her gender:

O GOD, THAT I WERE A MAN! I WOULD EAT HIS HEART IN THE MARKETPLACE.

And, if Nines is Beatrice, it’s Nines who says the line “I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.” And I like that so much better coming from Nines than coming from Gavin.

Much Ado is a good play for these two in general because it’s about two proud lonely idiots having to humble themselves enough to admit that they’re in love with each other. Sound familiar? Oh, that’s every Reed900 fic? Yup! Tale as old as time!

What other thoughts did I have let me think

When Benedick overhears a staged conversation about how Beatrice is in love with him: “Love ME? WHY?” Excellent.

I think this would be a really fun fic to explore everything that I love about acting and how when you and your scene partner are both really serious about acting, it brings you very close to them emotionally even if you didn’t intend that or necessarily want it. You feel every feeling that your character feels through them and you are also just so happy that you’re both such AMAZING GODDAMN ACTORS that this scene is BRILLIANT and it wouldn’t be this good if your scene partner hadn’t WORKED SO HARD AND IF THEY WERENT SUCH A GOOD ACTOR so even if you think they’re an obnoxious prick offstage, when you’re acting together you feel so proud of the art you’re making together and you kind of fucking adore them for the effort and talent that they’ve thrown into the scene.

Also, my favorite thing about any AU where Gavin isn’t a cop and was never a cop is making him say to Nines, “Did you know I was almost a cop?” I just think it’s funny.

I’m sorry I’m actually really sick today and I’ll make this a better and more cohesive post when I’m not so scrambled. Don’t reblog this one, I’ll make a better one! But I wanted to get this idea out into the world RIGHT now

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hellyescharlesedwards · 7 years

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The Range in Spades.

By Peter Craven.

As with everyone, My Fair Lady is an ancient memory for Charles Edwards, who seems to oscillate from the Rex Harrison repertoire to Shakespeare – Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit with Angela Lansbury in the West End and America, but also Oberon to Judi Dench’s Titania, directed by Peter Hall.

“I was fascinated by it as a child,” he says. “The LP of the original with Rex and Julie [Andrews] I found – I can’t remember how old I would have been, but quite little – but I remember being really fascinated by the wit, even at that stage. I knew it was very clever and very sharp and very English, particularly the way Rex did it.”

Edwards is the new Henry Higgins in Julie Andrews’ production of My Fair Lady. It’s the Hamlet of high-comedy roles and arguably the greatest of all musicals. So what does he do with Higgins’ sprechgesang? Does he follow the notes or does he do what Rex Harrison did on Broadway in 1956, opposite Andrews’ Eliza Doolittle, hitting a note every so often but speaking his way through?

“I follow that,” Edwards says, of the latter. “I personally find if you follow the notes in Higgins’ songs, what is revealed to you is that they’re not nearly as much fun. They actually become rather leaden. And what you need with those songs is great lightness and dexterity.

“I’d been playing around with doing it slightly off the beat, trying to maybe be a little bit clever with it. But Guy Simpson, our brilliant musical director, says it’s much better if you can speak as much as you like but just stick to the beat. It’s more real, there’s more of the character. Higgins knows what he’s saying, he doesn’t have to dither either side of the beat.” Frederick Loewe, after all, wrote it for Harrison, knowing he couldn’t sing. “I think that’s perhaps why if you try to sing more than one should it’s less interesting because it is written for the man who was going to do it like that.”

Michael Redgrave famously refused the role of Higgins because it meant committing to a long run. How does Edwards feel about a longish stretch of phonetics and feminist musical comedy? “Oh, I could do it for a while,” he says. “I arrived, performed it in Brisbane, and now I’m rehearsing it in a way… for my own satisfaction. Something which would happen in four or six weeks of rehearsal is now happening to me, internally, just myself, finding my way. I feel like I’m still starting out even though the performance is there. I could do it for a bit longer because there is a lot more to explore.”

I tell him I’ve just watched the recording of him playing Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing – the one role Harrison recorded for Caedmon, which is largely in prose and the Bard’s most Shavian play. “It was really fun,” Edwards says of his stint opposite Eve Best at the Globe in the role with a family resemblance to Higgins. “Julie [Andrews] likes comparing Shaw as the natural successor to Shakespeare in terms of that kind of comedy. I’m very drawn to both of these roles. That was a joy to do.” He adds that he learnt something from the Globe, because it’s rougher, more extroverted theatre. “If it’s done with wit,” he says, “it can be a great crowd-pleaser, without being naff. And I think it has informed my work to such an extent that often since I’ve been told, ‘Just calm down, Charles.’ ”

When I tell him he was very good as the Tory whip in This House, the parliamentary play by James Graham, done by the National Theatre, he says of the author, “I don’t know how old he is, he’s something annoying like… he’s probably hit 30. I hope he has.” But he adds that at 47 himself he’s probably a bit younger than the received image of Higgins from the film of My Fair Lady, even though Shaw describes him as a pleasant-looking man of 40. It must be odd to inhabit a role with such a powerful acting ghost in the background.

I once saw Harrison – very, very old – at an airport sweeping past in what looked exactly like the hat and coat he – and Edwards – wears in the opening scene of My Fair Lady in Covent Garden. “There’s a lot, I’m sure, in the production we’ve inherited that he insisted on,” Edwards says. “I’m sure that will be true of the hat … And here we are now, probably wearing the very weave he ordered from a particular tailor.”

Of course, everyone likes the cut of Higgins’ cloth and would like to make it their own. George Clooney, of all people, is said to have had an eye on the role when Emma Thompson wanted to make a new film of it with Carey Mulligan as Eliza. And with the old George Cukor film, Alan Jay Lerner, treacherously, wanted Peter O’Toole, still in his 30s, rather than Harrison. Like O’Toole, Edwards does both ends of the acting spectrum: the light-as-air prose comedy of Shaw and the poetic majesties of Shakespeare. He worked with Peter Hall, the founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

“I’ve done quite a lot with him,” he says. “I think I auditioned one year when he used to run the season at Bath and he took a shine and kept wanting me back to do this and that.” His work with Hall included another Much Ado, where he played Don Pedro. “He got it into his head,” Edwards says, “that Don Pedro at the end was like Malvolio or Antonio, the man who gets left alone.” So Edwards’ Don was a bit in love with Claudio and something of “a real devil”.

His Oberon to Dench’s Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream came from another of Hall’s bright ideas. “Peter put it to me, ‘Look, I’ve got this idea, it’s like Elizabeth and Essex…’ They did a prelude to the evening where the players were assembling to put on a play for Elizabeth I and then Elizabeth/Judi arrives and selects me.” He says that Dench, like Andrews, is great to be with and “just as nervous and scared as the rest of us all are. They’re very great company people; their fun is being in the company.” This was the second time he’d worked with Dench because he’d been her fancy man, Sandy, when she played Judith Bliss in Coward’s classic comedy Hay Fever. He loves the lightness of My Fair Lady and the way it can modulate into the gravity of “I’ve Grown Accustomed to her Face”, with its utterly moody interplay between hilarities of exasperation, and something else, something at the edge of heartbreak.

Of course, acting careers have their light and dark. Harrison, high comedian though he was, did Preston Sturges’s Unfaithfully Yours, that demon study of jealousy. Marcello Mastroianni, in many ways his European equivalent, made some of the more serious masterpieces, everything from 8 ½ to La Notte. And Edwards went straight from acting with Olivia Williams in Harley Granville Barker’s Waste to doing a chocolate-box soap TV drama, The Halcyon, with her. He says Granville Barker stands up very well when you prune him back and you know he thinks this of Shaw, too – the way “The Rain in Spain” crystallises something Shaw takes for granted and talks around – and does so operatically. “I find it very touching, that bit,” Edwards says. “It’s wonderful to do.”

And he’s at pains to defend Higgins, the man who – at Harrison’s insistence – was given another Act II number, “A Hymn to Him”. “He’s not a snob,” Edwards says. “He’s trying to remove the social gaps. He’s trying to erase them, in a rather perverse way by wanting everyone to speak the same and dismiss regional accents – but he’s not a snob. He’s an egalitarian.”

It’s always a fascinating thing to listen to an actor let his mind roam about the ins and outs, the winding staircase of his career. Charles Edwards went to a preparatory school named Amesbury in Surrey, which he says was “pure Decline and Fall, full of eccentrics, some of them quite dangerous eccentrics”. His salvation was Hamlet. “I was invited by – you know, we all have these teachers who encourage us – his name is Simon Elliot and he’ll still come and see me in shows now. ‘I’d like to talk to you about Hamlet,’ he said. ‘Oh yeah?’ ”

From there, a career. Here he is on Angela Lansbury: “She is in every way fit. In Blithe Spirit she did this extraordinary dance with these jerky movements as she was preparing for a séance. I don’t know what it was but I know every night she loved doing it and changing it.” And on Maria Aitken, brilliant as the wife of John Cleese’s Archie in A Fish Called Wanda, who directed Edwards in The 39 Steps: “With comedy she immediately knows, ‘That’s what I want for this show.’ And that it has to be taken very seriously. She’s the person you need at the centre, taking it absolutely seriously.” She insisted that Edwards – who was the production’s original Hannay in The 39 Steps – had to play the role when it transferred to Broadway. “She was lovely. She fought for me and she said, ‘You need the Englishman. You need the backbone.’ And they brought me over even though the rest of the cast was two Americans and one Canadian. It was great, I was thrilled. But it’s the kind of humour that can tip. It’s got to be tasteful, it’s got to have taste. Taste is the key with humour that involves an audience.”

All of which brings us round to the ending of My Fair Lady where Eliza comes back to Higgins. She has sung that she can do “Without You”. “Absolutely,” he says, “and this is heightened by the ending, the fact that some people would ask why does she come back to him. But there has to be a meeting of minds, a meeting of souls, and that’s what he realises right at the end. She comes back to show him that she has to be there, but she is in charge. And he sees that and accepts that. And all of that we try to do in three seconds of the show.”

Edwards laughs.

So what is it like to work with Julie Andrews as she re-creates the original production of My Fair Lady by the legendary Moss Hart? “It was a real treat, it’s an extraordinary thing and very touching to see her remembering it,” Edwards says.

Obviously the production is a blueprint, which he had to fit himself to, but the man who is best known here for his stint in Downton Abbey adds, “But you have to imbue it with a new texture.”.

Taken from The Saturday Paper, published Jul 15, 2017.

#Charles Edwards #my fair lady #interviews

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